


The Storms Ahead

by PrincessAmericaChavez



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Doubt, F/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Pining, post ep 44
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 10:41:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16952490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessAmericaChavez/pseuds/PrincessAmericaChavez
Summary: Jester receives some grim advice from a friend and Fjord worries there might not be going back from his choices.





	The Storms Ahead

There’s a strange kind of numbness spreading through Jester’s chest and a hole in her stomach where laughter usually sits. She can’t explain the tension that presses her shoulder blades together, nor the unease that crawls down her spine, even as they leave the Diver’s Grave behind and finally head to port. The fight was bad, and Dashila was scary, but they beat her like they always do, and yet that void inside her makes her gut twist as if she’d eaten a stale pastry. 

As the rest of the party goes their separate ways, she takes a look around the deck. Caduceus, Yasha, Beau and Nott all head to the kitchen to eat. 

“I’m not really that hungry, really,” she shrugs off Nott’s invitation. “I think I just wanna sleep a little.”

Caleb excuses himself too, eyes cast low and tense. He hasn’t looked at her once ever since they left the cave, since she shook her head and he glanced back mournful after they nearly summon a storm with their blood.

It’s worse with Fjord, though, because he’s acting almost normal as if nothing bad had happened, as if he hadn’t clouded the cave’s water with his blood half an hour ago, but Jester  _knows._ She knows because she was there, but she would be able to tell either way, given the tension in his jaw and the distance in his stare as he walks back to the Captain’s quarters where he’s been sleeping ever since they got this ship. Jester watches him walk away in silence, and for the first time in months feels no impulse to follow his steps, no wish to steal away at least a small moment alone with him, no craving to hear him laugh and relax after an exhausting day. Instead, she turns around and walks in the opposite direction, into her and Beau’s room. 

The Traveler is waiting for her inside, sitting on her bed and idly drawing magical jellyfish with his fingers. Jester’s heart skips a beat with the surprise visit but is soon comforted by a familiar warmth. She really needed her best friend right now. 

“Hi,” she whispers with a smile, as she closes the door behind her. “Did you… did you see all that?”

“I did,” he replies, with a slow nod. 

“What was that all about?!” She finally yells out the question that’s been eating her up inside as she stomps over to Beau’s bed and sits on its edge. “I didn’t like it! I didn’t like it, at all! I don’t know what they were thinking! It was so weird!”

The Traveler nods along as she rants for a couple more minutes. Then, when she’s done and feeling a little less empty inside, she falls quiet. It takes him a moment to reply like he usually does when he’s thinking something through (or coming up with a particularly fun prank), then he says:

“That’s the reason I am here.”

“It- it is?”

“Yes,” he nods. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Jester crosses her legs and leans forward, eyes set on him as he goes on. 

“These new friends of ours, I know you care about them dearly, but you must be careful, little one, many of them play with things they do not understand.”

“Well, we all kinda do, sometimes, kinda, don’t we?” Jester shrugs. “That’s what makes all of this so much fun.”

“It is very entertaining, yes,” The Traveler smiles, but he gets serious all too quickly again. Jester has only seen him like this a couple times before, when he told her to run away from Nicodranas and when he showed up after the Iron Shepherds. “However,” he goes on, “there are different types of chaos. There’s the one you create, my girl, full of joy and mischief, and then there’s a kind of chaos that is destructive and dark and dangerous.”

“Is… Is that what they were doing, back there in the cave?” Jester ventures to ask, voice small. 

He nods once, slowly.

“But maybe if they knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t have, you know?”

“Perhaps, but you must be wary of those that seek power for the sake of power, and those willings to sacrifice anything to get it, those hungry and willing to consume anything they may need in order to achieve their goals. They are a danger to those that cross their path, and I will not have it threaten you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Jester tries to smile, tilting her head, “they wouldn’t hurt me.  _Fjord_ wouldn’t.”

He doesn’t reply, and that lack of confirmation makes the void inside her chest grow ten times larger.

“Do you… do you think they are dangerous?”

“I believe they do not know what they are after, or why they want it,” The Traveler says slowly as if he’s carefully picking every word. “I would only ask that you maintain your eyes open and place caution on who you put your trust on. Not every deity is as wonderful as I.”

“Of course not,” Jester smiles, despite the pain twisting inside her. “I don’t… I don’t want to leave them, though.”

“Let us hope, then, that it will not come to that. If they are as good as you believe them to be, and with you around to bring light into their hearts, they might still find their path back to the balance that true joyful chaos requires to thrive.”

“Okay,” she whispers and nods. 

The Traveler stands up, then, with one swift move, and crosses the distance between them, reaching out until his long fingers caress the side of her face. His magic fills her with warmth and comfort that slightly erases the numbness that’s been eating her up inside. She feels the pressure of cold lips against her forehead and hears him whisper:

“Whatever may happen, I am always with you.”

And then he’s gone. One of the jellyfish he’d been idly creating when she walked in is left behind for a couple seconds, floating in her room like a bright pink lantern until it fades away into nothingness again. 

The dull ache inside her persists.

* * *

Fjord looks at the night sea before him, but he doesn’t see it. He’d hoped the calm of the empty deck, the chill night air and the sound of the waves would take his mind off the dreams that came to him earlier, but even now all he sees is the dark new temple and the three eyes that smiled at him with a row of sharp horrifying teeth. Which is why, when there’s a sudden dash of blue by his side, his first instinct is to pull out his falchion and swing. 

 _Thankfully,_ he misses. Just barely. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Jester jumps back, both hands raised in surrender. 

“ _Jeez,_ Jester,” Fjord sighs, letting his weapon disappear immediately, “don’t scare me like that.”

“Sorry,” Jester repeats. 

Something’s not right. Fjord’s not sure how he knows it —he’s never been that great at reading people—, but he can  _feel_ it in the way her eyes stay wide open and she keeps her distance from him even after his falchion is gone. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Jester shrugs, looking away at the sea. The moon’s pale shine makes the water look like silver. “I just couldn’t sleep. You?”

“Yeah, me neither,” Fjord sighs, leaning his arms on the railing again.

He can feel the swish of Jester’s tail, swinging anxiously even as she stares out towards the waves with a calm expression. 

“Did you… did you have another one of your wet dreams?”

“I really wish you’d stop calling them that,” Fjord says, but his voice betrays him with a small huff of laughter that finally makes her turn to look at him. “Yeah. I did.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” he says, thinking back of the sharp teeth, of the temple, of Vandrin and Sabien and Avantika’s statues turned to shreds by his magic. “Not yet.”

“Okay.”

She doesn’t push. She never does. Fjord is unspeakably grateful for that. He’s never felt that Jester needed to know more than he gave her, she trusts him enough just as it is, and he values that silent understanding between them more than all the treasures in the world, especially right now. 

“So,” she says, instead, “you got the orb.”

“I did,” he smiles, feeling his chest swell a little with a sense of victory. “Thank you, by the way, for helping me find it.”

“Sure,” Jester replies, but there’s an unusual dryness to it that throws him off balance as if they’d suddenly gotten off script. There’s a frown where there should be a smile and a small hint of a darker blue blush, and her voice lacks the gentleness he’s come to expect from her after he thanks her like this. “So what are we gonna do now?”

“I think we should go to that temple we found about, the one in the archipelago.”

“Isn’t that the one Avantika wanted to go to?”

“I guess.”

“Why do you wanna go there, though?”

“I’m- I’m not sure. I guess I’m just hoping to find some answers. It just feels like the next step, you know?”

“The next step for what, Fjord?” She pushes, and he turns to find two violet eyes set on him, anxiously waiting for an answer. 

“I’m not sure. Honestly, I just want to know what’s going on with me, I feel like if I do this, I might find what I need. Maybe figure out why Vandrin had this orb, what he was doing with it.”

“We didn’t find him down there.”

“We didn’t,” he nods. “I’m hoping that’s a good thing. Maybe he’s still out there.”

“Yeah, maybe he survived too, like you,” she offers with a smile, and for a moment her expression fits her again and he feels like everything will be alright, but before he can savor that sweetness her brow furrows once more. “So you want to go to the temple, then.”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she nods. “And then we go home?”

Again, she pins him with those bright eyes, with a stare that’s all too powerful, as if she’s trying to stare into his very soul. Fjord hesitates. He doesn’t want to go back to the coast yet, not when Vandrin might still be out there, not when there are so many answers he hasn’t found, not when he’s barely beginning to tap into this unbelievable powers… but there’s a sadness in Jester’s face that reminds him of another night weeks ago, of tear tracks reflecting soft jellyfish glow, of Jester’s mother and how tender and warm she’d been. 

“And then we go home,” he nods.

“ _Fjord._ Do you promise?”

Something new twists inside him when she doesn’t believe him. She has to know he wouldn’t lie to her. Never to her. And yet, her face is still pleading and her eyes are wide and sad as she stares at him, like she’s holding her breath, like she’s scared of his answer. 

“I  _promise,”_ he says, and he means it wholeheartedly. 

It works. Some of the tension on her shoulders seems to bleed out as she smiles, and her tail’s frantic whipping slows down to its usual playful pace. It’s not entirely fine, not how it should be, he thinks, but it’s a step forward. He wishes he was good at these things, like Caduceus, that he could  _tell_ what’s wrong so that he could mend it right now. The underlying unease between them is not something he thinks he could take, not right now, not with everything going on.

“You were great down there today,” he offers, at a loss but desperate to fix the tension between them.

“Thanks,” she smiles. “You too, except…”

She reaches out and grabs his right hand with a swift movement, too fast and firm for him to even react. He watches, speechless, as she traces her touch over the half-closed wound across his palm. The familiar warmth of her magic tickles his skin as the remaining pain dissipates and all traces of harm are only a memory.

“Thank you,” he sighs, fondly.

“That was very stupid, you know,” she replies, voice snappish again, as she looks back up at him. She’s still holding his hand between hers and Fjord can feel the pressure of her fingers squeeze him a little bit tighter.

“I know, Jester.”

“Why did you do that?” 

“I-” 

Fjord finds those bright violet gems set on him once more, piercing through any mask or lie he could possibly come up with. He doesn’t want to lie to her —he probably couldn’t, even if he tried— but the truth is no better, and she’s looking at him as if his answer was a matter of life or death.

“I- I don’t know,” he admits. “I just- I just wanted to.”

Wrong answer. 

He knows immediately. He’s no Clay, but the second the words leave his lips is like the pause when you hear the ‘click’ of a trap you just stepped on. He screwed up. He doesn’t know how, or why, but he knows, because Jester’s whole face closes off, because she let’s go of his hand, because she takes a step back and sends him a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. She looks scared and hurt, and he might not know a lot about reading people, but he knows Jester. 

His brain races desperately, trying to fix whatever he just broke, put it all back together.  _Say anything. Drop a joke. Make her laugh. Offer something, anything, that will erase that sadness from her face._ Before he can, though, she beats him to the punch. 

“I’m gonna go back to bed now,” she declares. “You should try to sleep too, Fjord.”

“Yeah, okay,” he replies, breathless. “Goodnight, then, Jester.”

“Goodnight,” she replies, already walking away. 

Fjord is left alone again in the ship’s deck, with only the rumor of the waves and the pale glow of the moonlight. He looks down at his hand, still held open palm up, still feels the tingle of her touch, the warmth of her skin against his. He closes his fingers, wishing they’d been fast enough to catch hers before she pulled away like that. 

When he looks out to the sea, he no longer sees three eyes, nor sharp teeth, nor temples and statues. In the darkness, his eyes search full of hope for a faint glow inside the water, as if another jellyfish bloom could heal whatever he has damaged. The sea is dark and lifeless tonight, though. 

The only thing his eyes find is the far away glow of thunder, from the storm they just left behind in the horizon, the storm his own blood and curiosity fed. He has a sinking feeling that there’s still a storm ahead of them, he could see its gray clouds behind Jester’s worried eyes.

“Fuck,” Fjord hisses out, in a voice that he’s almost forgotten now.


End file.
